


Harbor

by mylittleredgirl



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s02e01 The 37's, F/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:34:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25557433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylittleredgirl/pseuds/mylittleredgirl
Summary: His whole life, Chakotay has wanted to go home.
Relationships: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Comments: 18
Kudos: 66





	Harbor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CoraClavia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoraClavia/gifts).



At 1400 hours, Captain Janeway gives the crew their options: stay, and make this planet their home, or keep going, through whatever dangers and decades lie between them and Earth.

For two hours, he listens to those who want to talk, until he can’t anymore. The captain made it clear she wants the crew to make their own choices without pressure from their leaders, and he’s finding it hard to stay impartial, not to push his own agenda. But it’s _Earth_ , he wants to say. It’s where we’re _from_.

He was eight years old the first time he set foot on it, old enough for him to remember in detail his father pressing his hand to the grooved bark of a juniper tree and calling it his cousin. His father was content to leave it there; his mother was always the one to feed his curiosity, and she followed up Kolopak’s mythical tales about the web of life with evolutionary science and an interactive book about DNA.

He remembers lying out under the desert stars with her, tucked under her arm.

“Does it feel like home to you, Chakotay?” she asked him.

He knew the right answer was _yes,_ so he nodded and rested his head on her chest. He lacked the vocabulary to explain it. He had the sense of standing just outside a warm house full of everyone who loved him, bathed in the light from an open window, one step from belonging.

When he told the captain he wants to _go home_ , the desire felt like it came from a deep, open space in him, a well that has never been filled. He needed her to hear it, not just so she’ll understand that she’s not alone, but so she’ll understand _him_.

Even before the Delta Quadrant, “home” always held an element of longing, a wish for something out of reach.

\--

He told the captain he wouldn’t even consider it—but he does, of course he does. Two hours of listening to his crewmates spin fantasies about life on a new world and weighing their chances of making it back to the old one makes it impossible not to. It’s difficult to guess how many will ultimately fall on each side of that choice.

His quarters look different in natural light, larger somehow, and he has the absurd regret that starship windows aren’t made to be opened. The lure of sunlight draws him close, and for a long time, he looks out at trees and life and good earth instead of cold, empty space.

For him, joining Starfleet was a way off his home planet, an attempt to soothe the restless part of his soul until he found his place in the universe, something that could quiet his anger and bring his purpose into focus. He has always enjoyed the camaraderie of serving on a starship, the challenge and exploration and accumulation of knowledge, but there’s something hollow about discoveries made at the edge of sensor range, with nothing physical to touch. His last posting was at Starfleet Academy, at his request, so he could breathe real air and feel the sun on his skin.

He never wanted to spend his whole life in space—and despite the captain’s relentless pursuit of a shortcut, that’s the most likely outcome of their unexpected journey.

So, for a few minutes, he thinks about a life looking up at the Delta Quadrant stars from below. He’d never see Earth again, never learn the fate of their fight or their friends left behind in the DMZ. He would go the rest of his life without hearing his father’s first language, or his mother’s—he refused to learn them, as a child, and now he misses the shape of the words even if he never understood their meaning. When he dies, his bones would be laid to rest in alien ground, a galaxy away from his people.

He imagines his friends here on _Voyager_ putting their roots down in the soil, eating real food, discovering new passions, new ways of being. They’d build something new, together, with their bare hands—a real, solid home far from the treaties and wars of the Alpha Quadrant. He imagines a next generation with room to run, their heads full of stories about the distant worlds their parents once called home.

A picture comes to him, fully formed: Him, with a house his father would be proud of, on a patch of well-worked land. A son or a daughter, a child he named and loves. Kathryn Janeway, with her face turned up to the sun.

That stops him, the vision dissolving as quickly as it came. She would never be truly happy without the stars at her fingertips, and he—

With a sensation like gravity shifting, he realizes that he wouldn’t be happy without _her_.

He laughs—it startles him, and then he can’t stop, laughing alone in his quarters until there are tears on his face and he can hardly breathe. It’s suddenly so easy not to worry about who they’ll find in the cargo bay tomorrow, or how many years it will take to get back to the Alpha Quadrant, because he’s already here, at her side. He’s _happy_. He’s no longer living on the knife edge of himself, fighting for control. She needs him, and she values him, and all his demons are no match for the way she says his name. It crept up on him so softly, he didn’t even notice that finally, for the first time in his life, it feels right to sit still.

His breath returns to normal. The emotional outburst passes, leaving him calm and sure.

When he looks at his reflection in the mirror, he sees a man at peace.

\--

They walk together to the cargo bay at 1500. The captain is nervous in a way that’s unlike her. On the bridge, she is always larger than life, and he’s as swayed by it as any of the aliens she stares down across the viewscreen. When they’re alone, though, sometimes she lets herself be vulnerable. The privilege of that honors him in a way he could never put into words.

She hesitates outside the door. Her breath catches when she speaks, and his heart swells with the desire to share every weight she carries.

He carefully puts his hand on her shoulder. His fingers tingle with the intimacy of it.

“No matter what happens,” he promises, “we'll make it.” He hopes she understands it for the solemn oath it is.

No one, no one, decides to stay behind. She takes a long minute to collect herself, and then turns to him with a smile so brilliant, it puts sunlight to shame.

“Well then, Commander,” she says. “Let’s get back to our bridge.”

He gestures, _after you_ , and follows her like it’s the only thing he’ll ever do.

\--

At her command, _Voyager_ lifts off, and warps away toward unfamiliar stars. He has never, in his life, felt more at home.

\- end -

 _My home is in the centre of your palms_  
_Sunk in the wells of your destiny_  
_That you carry like a liquid in your eyes_  
_Or like an abode in your hand, my very own delta_  
_Between the nine mounds of the universe_

_-[Home](https://www.vinitawords.com/journal/2014/7/5/home), by Vinita Agrawal_


End file.
